Nn Killing Linked To Spree

Bank Robbers' Hunt For Getaway Car Motive For Slaying?

February 01, 1996|By DAVID CHERNICKY and A.J. PLUNKETT Daily Press

A Newport News man whose body was found frozen in a Denbigh construction shed three weeks ago may have been killed for the car he was driving by two men and one woman who wanted a getaway car for a bank robbery, police say.

Law enforcement officials in Newport News, York County and Chesterfield County, S.C., have linked the trio to at least one murder and a series of armed robberies and carjackings. A South Carolina man, whose car was found Monday in Newport News, remains missing and is feared dead.

A police dragnet of Hampton's Pine Chapel area Tuesday night resulted in the arrests of Jeoffrey Holman and Dailene Marshall, both 24, on charges of murder and carjacking in the shotgun slaying of Michael H. Martin of Newport News.

The hunt continued Wednesday for a third suspect, 28-year-old Kenneth Hardy, whose last known address was in the 400 block of Denbigh Boulevard - the same block where Martin's body was found Jan. 12, three days after police believe he was killed.

Hardy ``is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous," said Newport News police spokesman Bobby Kipper.

The arrests came as something of a relief to police, who initially were baffled by Martin's murder and repeatedly made public pleas for information. Martin was last seen driving his girlfriend's Mitsubishi Galant as he left his job on Route 17 in York County about 5:30 a.m. Jan. 9.

At the crime scene, still snowy and iced over from a major snowstorm Jan. 8, detectives found no automobile and few clues.

There was ``no information of any kind at all that would give just a smidgen of evidence as to which way this way would go,'' Newport News Police Chief William F. Corvello said Wednesday.

Corvello said detectives spent countless hours backtracking Martin's last movements, including checking the all-night convenience stores on Martin's route, and came up empty.

Police later learned that the Galant, stripped of its license plates, had been towed Jan. 10 from the Turnberry Wells II townhouse complex, which is less than a mile from where Martin's body was found.

Few clues turned up until a break came with the routine investigation of a robbery at the Ivy Farms Texaco on Sunday night. In canvassing the nearby area, police became suspicious of a 1990 red Mustang parked at The Patton Motel on Jefferson Avenue.

A check of the car's license tag showed it belonged on a 1987 Volkswagen. Police then checked the car's identification number and learned it had been stolen in South Carolina on Jan. 22 and its owner, Alexander Pegues, was missing, according to police and court records.

A ``reddish stain believed to be blood'' was found in the Mustang, according to a search warrant affidavit filed Wednesday in Newport News.

Chesterfield County Sheriff's Department officials were already looking for Holman and Marshall, of Hampton, in the theft of the car and Pegues' disappearance, said Chief Deputy Ronnie Huntley of Chesterfield County.

Pegues, 42, lived in the tiny rural town of Cheraw and worked at Sandhill Quilting Company Inc. in nearby Wallace. Holman also worked at the textile factory from March 1993 to July 1994 and was fired after he threatened a supervisor, said George Walters Jr., Sandhill president. Holman's most recent residence was in the 500 block of Chinkapin Trail in Newport News.

Both worked as quilting machine operators and knew one another, Walters said.

Pegues, whom Walters described as a loyal employee and personal family friend, was last seen Jan. 22 in the yard of a trailer home owned by a relative of Holman's, Huntley said.

Chesterfield officials believe there was a fight or scuffle between Pegues and Holman, Huntley said. Holman occasionally visited the area, he said. Deputies were uncertain what the fight was about, he said.

Authorities have searched vacant buildings and abandoned houses in a 20-mile radius of the trailer home but have found no trace of Pegues, said Lt. Johnny Quick, chief investigator for Chesterfield County.

Pegues has four children living with his ex-wife and is expecting another child by his girlfriend next month, Chesterfield deputies said.

In Newport News, police interviewed at least one person who saw a couple, believed to be Marshall and Holman, washing the car seats of the Mustang, according to the affidavit.

As of Wednesday, Chesterfield authorities said they had charged Holman and Marshall only with grand larceny of the Mustang. An investigator will travel to Newport News today to interview the couple.

Holman and Marshall were arrested Tuesday after Newport News detectives tracked them to Hampton's Pine Chapel neighborhood. Marshall was arrested at a residence. Holman was arrested unarmed after a police chase in vehicles and on foot.

Hampton Detective Jimmy Forbes was sitting in an unmarked police car near Findley Square when he spotted a man walking. When he jumped from the car to chase him, the suspect ran through a wooded area behind some houses.